Cacciola Alberto, Milardi Demetrio, Anastasi Giuseppe P, Basile Gianpaolo A, Ciolli Pietro, Irrera Mariangela, Cutroneo Giuseppina, Bruschetta Daniele, Rizzo Giuseppina, Mondello Stefania, Bramanti Placido, Quartarone Angelo
Department of Biomedical, Dental Sciences and Morphological and Functional Images, University of Messina Messina, Italy.
Department of Biomedical, Dental Sciences and Morphological and Functional Images, University of MessinaMessina, Italy; IRCCS Centro Neurolesi "Bonino Pulejo"Messina, Italy.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2016 Jul 26;10:374. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2016.00374. eCollection 2016.
Substantia nigra is an important neuronal structure, located in the ventral midbrain, that exerts a regulatory function within the basal ganglia circuitry through the nigro-striatal pathway. Although its subcortical connections are relatively well-known in human brain, little is known about its cortical connections. The existence of a direct cortico-nigral pathway has been demonstrated in rodents and primates but only hypothesized in humans. In this study, we aimed at evaluating cortical connections of substantia nigra in vivo in human brain by using probabilistic constrained spherical deconvolution (CSD) tractography on magnetic resonance diffusion weighted imaging data. We found that substantia nigra is connected with cerebral cortex as a whole, with the most representative connections involving prefrontal cortex, precentral and postcentral gyri and superior parietal lobule. These results may be relevant for the comprehension of the pathophysiology of several neurological disorders involving substantia nigra, such as parkinson's disease, schizophrenia, and pathological addictions.
黑质是一种重要的神经元结构，位于中脑腹侧，通过黑质-纹状体通路在基底神经节回路中发挥调节功能。尽管其在人类大脑中的皮质下连接相对为人所知，但其皮质连接却知之甚少。在啮齿动物和灵长类动物中已证实存在直接的皮质-黑质通路，但在人类中仅为推测。在本研究中，我们旨在通过对磁共振扩散加权成像数据进行概率约束球面反卷积（CSD）纤维束成像，在活体人类大脑中评估黑质的皮质连接。我们发现黑质与整个大脑皮层相连，最具代表性的连接涉及前额叶皮层、中央前回和中央后回以及顶上小叶。这些结果可能有助于理解涉及黑质的几种神经疾病的病理生理学，如帕金森病、精神分裂症和病理性成瘾。
